The Stars, My Brothers

Edmond Hamilton (1904 – 1977) had a career that began as a regular and frequent contributor to Weird Tales magazine. The first hardcover publication of Science Fiction stories was a Hamilton compilation, and he and E.E. “Doc” Smith are credited with the creation of the Space Opera type of story. He worked for DC Comics authoring many stories for their Superman and Batman characters. Hamilton was also married to fellow author Leigh Brackett. – Published in the May, 1962 issue of Amazing Stories “The Stars, My Brothers” gives us a re-animated astronaut plucked from a century in the past and presented with an alien world where the line between humans and animals is blurred.

First Page:

THE STARS, MY BROTHERS

By EDMOND HAMILTON

Illustrated by FINLAY

He was afraid not of the present or the future, but of the past. He was afraid of the thing tagged Reed Kieran, that stiff blind voiceless thing wheeling its slow orbit around the Moon, companion to dead worlds and silent space.

[Illustration]

1.

Something tiny went wrong, but no one ever knew whether it was in an electric relay or in the brain of the pilot.

The pilot was Lieutenant Charles Wandek, UNRC, home address: 1677 Anstey Avenue, Detroit. He did not survive the crash of his ferry into Wheel Five. Neither did his three passengers, a young French astrophysicist, an East Indian expert on magnetic fields, and a forty year old man from Philadelphia who was coming out to replace a pump technician.

Someone else who did not survive was Reed Kieran, the only man in Wheel Five itself to lose his life. Kieran, who was thirty six years old, was an accredited scientist employee of UNRC. Home address: 815 Elm Street, Midland Springs, Ohio... Continue reading book >>